Yuval Ariav

First-check investor and entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience in growing startups from zero to one and navigating them as they mature into large, complex, successful companies. I spend my time between Tel Aviv, New York, and SF, and have a solid view of these ecosystems. I love being a sounding board for entrepreneurs from all backgrounds thinking through venture ideas, with a soft spot for non-conventional domains considered to be hard to crack or niche. In 2021 I founded Symbol, a $50M first-check sector-agnostic venture capital fund backing exceptional Israeli founders building pre-consensus companies. I was privileged to lead/participate in the first funding rounds of companies such as NextSilicon, Fundguard, Assured Allies, Sightful, and Approve (acquired by Tipalty). Prior to Symbol I was a General Partner at LionBird, co-founder and CTO of Fundbox and led Product and Engineering for Onavo (acquired by Meta for $200M). For the past 5 years I've been spending fall semesters at Columbia University as an Adjunct Professor (funny story how it happened), teaching the course Data Driven Dollars about the intersection of digital data, business, and society.